The 2016 Olympic Games kick off in Rio de Janeiro with a payment innovation as the capital’s public transit operator, RioCard has revealed that it will provide residents and visitors with contactless wearable devices that will work on buses, ferries, the subway and trains.

Contactless payments were first introduced in Brazil in 2013, when the capital’s RioCard partnered with Gemalto, Motorola Mobility and the Brazil’s four leading mobile operators – Claro, Oi, Telefónica and TIM, supported by the GSMA.

Not much is different this time round as RioCard has again partnered with Gemalto, which is providing the transit operator with its waterproof contactless wristband and also a contactless sticker both embedded with a contactless chip from Gemalto and certified by Visa and MasterCard enabling all the secure functionalities of traditional contactless EMV cards.

According to the Brazilian Tourism Institute, the capital is expecting to welcome 500,000 visitors and wearable payments are seen by RioCard as one of the ways of reinforcing the transport infrastructure.

“The new RioCard wristbands support our goal to create a more convenient and secure travel experience for all residents and visitors to Rio de Janeiro,” said Cassiano Rusycki, CEO, RioCard.

I caught up with Guillaume Andre, Head of Marketing, Ingenico Northern Europe, to discuss the implications of a tech giant-payments provider collaboration-led future, and how Ingenico and Google might continue to innovate the POS system in the future.

The future is even closer than we think. The increasing pace of technological change means concepts formerly considered only abstract theories on a distant horizon are already nearly upon us. By Urs Gubser, Head E-Commerce, SIX Payment Services.